president obama spent the better part of the hour talking about the debt ceiling. so we'll go into the details about what it is, exactly. it is a cap on the amount of money the federal government may borrow. the cap is actually set by congress. so it includes money the federal government borrows from the public. for example, u.s. bonds, right? also includes debt that the treasury owes the government, trust funds like social security and medicare. right now, the ceiling, is it set at almost $16.4 trillion. the country's borrowing already hit that mark. that happened on december 31st. so the ceiling is raised periodically because both parties, they have to have approved the tax cuts and the spending increases over the years, knowing that they're going to add to the deficits. by doing so, they increase the country's need to borrow in the future. since 1962, congress has raised the debt limit 76 times, 11 times in the past decade. i want to talk about the debate over the debt ceiling, how it affects the overall economy. our georgia tech economics professor, danny bosto